


Nothing (I'm Running From)

by agenthill



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [10]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenthill/pseuds/agenthill
Summary: Now, her dream seems foolish, seems an impossible one, in the face of what she has learned to be the truth of the world, in the face of what she has seen, in the face of what she has chosen to do, and what she has been made to.Or,Ana comes to terms with who she is, and how she got there, before she returns to the fold.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Viceter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viceter/gifts).



> Vice sent me an ask on [tumblr](http://agenthill.tumblr.com/ask) asking about my headcanons about a younger Ana and I... went overboard. Ana is my fave so how could I _not_ write this much?
> 
> Crossposted to tumblr.

Sometimes, it is hard for Ana to remember what it is she was before she was a soldier (a killer), a mother (a protector), the Shrike (no one). Sometimes, it seems like she has never been anyone but the woman whom she is today, like the past never existed, and she is only of and for the moment. Sometimes, Ana struggles to connect the child she once was with Captain Amari, war hero, struggles to reconcile her once-dreams with the present day. This is not to say that her past is entirely forgotten, not to say that she does not know from whence she came but (often) she wishes that were the case, for it would be easier, would simpler, never to have been anything but this. Were she never a child with hopes for a peaceful future, she could never have grown into a woman who kills to preserve life, could never have lived to betray her own principles so thoroughly.

Yet, how could she have escaped this? Looking back, how could she have been anyone but the woman she is? Just as she sought to protect Fareeha from this inevitability, struggled to show her daughter that she might do something other than kill in order to save, only to fail because war and war heroes were what Fareeha was raised with, she, too, grew up hearing of battlefields and noble sacrifices. She, too, bears the burden of a family name, the struggle to not falter, and allow the family legacy to be lost. They were born to war, she and her daughter both, but sometimes, when she looks back, it almost, _almost_ seems as if her life might have been different, and that is enough to sting.

* * *

 

Ana's earliest memories of her childhood are of herself sat at her grandfather's foot as he spoke about his own time at war, his own role in both revolution and fights on foreign soil. He never told her of the violence, of the weight of taking a life, never told her what it was to know that you live only because another has not, never told her about waking, most nights, in a cold sweat, mind trapped thousands of kilometers away, still on a battlefield you thought you lived to walk away from.

When her grandfather spoke of war, it was never anything but romanticized, was stories of camaraderie and heroic deeds, of lives saved and borders secured, all things which then sounded noble but today sound only foolish, juvenile. What Ana thought, as a child, listening to her grandfather, was that he was a hero--and, maybe, he was--but being a hero, she has learned since, is nothing like the thought it was at the time, is not nearly so pleasant as she might have thought.

(Heroes are venerated not because they do what no one else can, but because they do what it is no one else is _willing_ to do. Even if Ana's own skill is extraordinary, she does not doubt that another could aim as well as she, if only they were given so little choice as she had.)

When her grandfather spoke of war, he failed to warn her of what it truly is--but why should he have? She was a child and, he thought, would never enlist--so why burden her with the knowledge of what he had truly given so that she might sit at his feet that day, why speak candidly of dangers he thought she would never know; that she knows them now is not his fault, not truly, but sometimes, she blames him, thinks that if he had never spoken with such fondness of his glory days she would not have so quickly followed in his footsteps.

(If Reinhardt and Jack and Gabriel, and all of the others besides had not spoken of Overwatch the way in which they did, perhaps Fareeha might have enlisted, and even now would be doing something else, would be safe. Ana tried to warn her, but how could she be honest with Fareeha about the degree war affected her, when even now she is not so honest with herself?)

Perhaps, her grandfather should not have had to have told her what was happening--looking back, she knows she should have seen it. Looking back, it is easy to see how he jumped when the neighbors set off fireworks, how he woke at odd hours of the night, how he sometimes stared straight ahead and saw nothing, mind years and kilometers away. Looking back, she cannot see his having sheltered her any differently than she did Fareeha, and can find no fault in what he did.

(If anything, he is less guilty than she, for it was not even legal for women to enlist until she was a teenager. If anything, it is _she_ who ought to have predicted Fareeha's future path, knowing how her grandfather shaped her own.)

* * *

 

A younger Ana could not have dreamed that she would one day be what she is now, and would not have besides. A younger Ana would hate the woman she has become, would find it unbelievable that she might one day become a bounty hunter, killing not within the law, or with her country at her back, but because it is all she feels she can do to affect change. A younger Ana also wanted to change the world, but not so violently as she does today.

In some ways, she can chart her path, can see that her goals are not so different from what they once were only--twisted, made into something they should never have been by time, by circumstance, by desperation. What she wanted, once, was to help people, to raise awareness of suffering and cruelty, to expose those who would harm the innocent, in order to stop those things. Action, if indirect. What she wanted was to protect, yes, but not like this, never like this.

(Now, she wonders if her younger self would have lumped the Shrike in with the rest of them, would have considered herself equal to warlords and weapons manufacturers--maybe, maybe she would have. Why should she not? What makes her so different, at the end of the day? She says she acts according to a code, but there is no one to oversee her, no one to stop her from crossing the line from justice to retribution, from defense to preemptive vengeance. Did Overwatch not do the same?)

Never did Ana wish to participate in war directly, as she does now. That was the realm of her father, her grandfather, her brother, men whom she loved and respected but had no desire to become--not because she thought that they had done wrong, but because she knew all soldiers knew at least one among their ranks who abused their power, one who became a killer in earnest, without creed. All soldiers knew an old soldier, one who left the war, but whom the fight would never leave.

(Now, Ana knows, that this is the truth of _all_ soldiers, at one point or another. The only difference is that some of them find their way back. Now, Ana knows, that her father, her brother, her grandfather--they must have done the things she railed against, in those days, must have known even as she spoke against them. Now, Ana knows, but she cannot find fault in them for it; she has done the same, and, perhaps, worse. Now, Ana knows, and wishes she did not.)

What Ana wanted was to be a photojournalist, to police the killers of the world not by fighting violence with violence but to do so by making the world aware of what they were, of what it was they had done; a dream which, in the here and now, seems naive. Even if she did rally the world against such men, who would have stopped them, and how might they have done so, without themselves killing, as she does now? No, she could have stopped no one with her pictures, and saves far more people with her gun than any photographer might have.

(Better, she thinks, that people not know from what she has saved them. Better that people not see the things which she has seen, confront the truths she now knows. Better that people be spared this, even if she could not spare Fareeha, her daughter, the whom she most wished to live a life of freedom, of happiness, one far from what she herself knows.)

Now, her dream seems foolish, seems an impossible one, in the face of what she has learned to be the truth of the world, in the face of what she has seen, in the face of what she has chosen to do, and what she has been made to. But, once, she truly believed in indirect action.

(In inaction, she might have said on her worse days as the Shrike. She has passed that point now, or so she tells herself, has buried some of the bitterness which compelled her to become that which she once hated above all else, a soldier without orders, a lone fighter, accountable to no one but herself.)

Once, Ana thought that people such as she is now were the most dangerous, could not be trusted to keep to a code, and to do what was right. Believing in things is not enough to make them true, she might have said, is not enough to justify one's actions.

(Has she not proven the girl she once was right? What has she done, because she believed her cause was just? What orders has she ignored, which has she _followed_? What she has done, and left undone, weighs on her often.)

It is not enough merely to believe in something, she was right then, but she knows now the qualifier; it is not enough to believe in something without _acting_ upon it, and act she does.

* * *

 

The decision to enlist was an abrupt one, was not something she necessarily considered at any length--to have done so seems foolish, now, but she did not know then what she does now, could not have imagined where her choices would bring her. At the time she did it, she knew only three things: first, that a month had not passed in centuries in when no Amari served to protect their country, in some capacity or another; second, that her brother's sudden death in a training accident left, suddenly, no remaining Amari enlisted; and third, that she, and no one else in her family, was of the appropriate age to enlist; had she known more, she might have chosen differently, she thinks. But then, she always was determined not to listen to anyone, always believed she, and she alone, knew what was best.

(She was, then, unlike any other Amari before, in that she did not believe in war itself--not like she does now. What she believed in was what she still believes in: in family. What she believed was not so dissimilar to what Fareeha must believe, that she would not see her grandfather, old, and ill, die while the family legacy remained unsecured. What she believed in was protecting her family, even if it meant losing or setting aside her goals, her life, her identity, even if she did not know then what that would mean for her in the present.)

While it was true that Ana had wanted to fight for a better world through other means, she did not think twice before enlisting--a choice which seems rash now, but then seemed only inevitable. Her first step not as a woman of ideals, but of action.

(Of course, then, she still thought ideals and action might be able to coexist, even if not for her in that moment. Then, she did not know desperation. Then, she did not know what it was to choose between what was right and what was pleasant. In enlisting, she thought she was doing so, but she did not know then what it was to look a man in the eye and pull the trigger, for no crime greater than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She did not know then what it was to say she fought to protect the children of the world, while killing the children of some other mother. She did not know then what it was to despise her very being, and to continue fighting nonetheless, for she knows now that there is no other way in which she might change things, no other way in which she could affect the world so greatly as she has by simply pulling a trigger.)

Even at the time she enlisted, she thought it would be short term, officer training, four years in the reserves, and out, never having once seen action, having merely held the place of the only Amari in the military until one of her cousins was old enough to enlist and take her place--she never imagined herself here, forty years down the line, a kill count so large she can no longer be certain just how high it is. She never imagined there might be an Omnic Crisis, and when she was in it, never imagined she might survive it, let alone be among those who won it, and still killing even after she restored the peace, still killing long enough that she has now lived to see the stirrings of a second. She never imagined a cause, only a duty, never imagined that the birth of her child might push her to see the world as her children, to see everyone as a part of that same family she had sworn to protect.

(She never imagined that daughter of hers growing to thrive in the same environment she despised. Never imagined that Fareeha, her daughter, could relish battle, might consider it an _honor_ to protect and not simply a duty. Never imagined that in trying to protect her daughter, she might lose her for more than a decade.)

* * *

 

In retrospect, Ana cannot place the exact time in which being a soldier changed from a duty, a job, a necessary sacrifice, into an identity, and yet, clearly, it has done so. Somewhere along the way, she has lost her ability to see herself as anything else, and while she has never lost the desire to leave, never lost the urge to run away, and do something, anything else, she can no longer see it as practical.

She is tired of running, is tired of denying whom she has become, is tired of pretending that she was ever meant to be anything more than the protector of those whom she loves. If Fareeha insists on going, still, into battle, insists on fighting a war that ought to have died with her mother, then Ana will return. If she cannot protect Fareeha from war by dying, cannot convince her to leave by speaking the truth of its impact on her life, then she will do what she has always done: load up her rifle and soldier on.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to end on a pun but... lbr it's a Me move. 
> 
> Title is from 1D's Strong.
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed, and comments are always appreciated (especially if they are you gushing about how much you love Ana... because I, too, love Ana so fucking much).
> 
> Have a great rest of your day!


End file.
